When Tyson Carter urged two men to quit harassing a young woman at a Brentwood bus stop Jan. 27, the unthinkable happened. An altercation broke out and during the calamity, his nose was bitten off, sending him down an unexpected path to recovery, Carter and medical officials said.

While Carter was initially evaluated at South Shore University Hospital in Bay Shore, he was soon transferred to Long Island Jewish Medical Center where nasal reconstruction would fall to Dr. Laurent Ganry, an oral and maxillofacial surgeon who has rebuilt more than 45 noses on patients, mostly due to cancer.

On Wednesday, Carter, 41, of Bay Shore, returned to Long Island Jewish Medical Center sporting a new nose that he said resembled the one he was born with, a feat he said was made possible by Ganry and the rest of the medical team. 

"I'm just grateful to Dr. Ganry," Carter said during a news conference.

"Everybody that knows me, that's seen me either immediately prior to it happening and after it happening, everybody's just amazed at how well it looks," Carter said. "Unless you really look, you can't even tell that anything happened." Carter said that he looks like his former self, minus some swelling. His only complaint was breathing difficulties due to allergies and sinus issues he had before the incident.

It took three surgeries over the span of roughly nine weeks for Carter’s nose to be near complete, with one final procedure left in the fall that could ease his breathing, Ganry said. 

During the news conference, Ganry demystified the complicated medical process. He described employing the forehead flap technique, one of the oldest surgical techniques for nasal reconstruction dating back to 700 BC in India. 

But before getting Carter under the knife, CT scans were used to create and print a 3D model of Carter’s face. Photos provided by Carter’s mother helped medical residents sculpt the nose from clay, a procedure that took about five hours, Ganry said. The clay model served as a template for the one that Ganry would later fashion from Carter’s own flesh.

"Because more than half of the nose was removed, we could not just mirror the right for the left, something was missing in the middle," Ganry said. He said the nostrils, the dorsum, and tip of the nose were gone.

"We clay the nose with an artistic approach, basically trying to reconstruct what was missing," Ganry said.

During the first surgery, skin and muscle were cut from the forehead to create a thin flap while leaving a trunk that carried the blood supply to the new shape, he said. 

Ganry said that by the third surgery, around week nine, blood vessels started growing in the nose, allowing him to cut the stem supplying the blood supply.

"Basically, the nose is alive without any further blood supply, because there is new vascularization, new blood vessels that just grow at the tip," Ganry said, adding that Tyson was now able to see better. Before that procedure, Tyson was unable to wear his eyeglasses, hindering his ability to see.

While Carter has taken the entire ordeal in stride, he has since lost his job at a distribution warehouse, and is itching to go back to work. 

When asked whether he regretted intervening in the bus stop incident, he remembered seeing the young lady taking the bus with him before, adding, "I should have just called the cops from the beginning." 

His mom, June Carter, of Bay Shore, who accompanied her son to the hospital Wednesday, said her "heart dropped," when she initially saw her son in the emergency room. While she always taught her children to help people in need, she is mostly relieved he was able to recover.

"I'm just glad my son is here because you hear so many stories about people getting injured and this was life-changing for him, but it could have been a lot worse," June Carter, 63, said, adding she is trying to raise money to cover his rent and other costs. 

A Suffolk County police spokesperson said three people involved in the Jan. 27 dispute declined to press charges and did not cooperate with the investigation.